


Man of Conscience

by Domimagetrix



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Adult Language, Adult Themes, D&D 5e, M/M, One (1) Lewd Afghan, Some Flirting/Suggestive Themes, be gay do crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 14:22:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16327646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domimagetrix/pseuds/Domimagetrix
Summary: An expy of Kaid Ir-Dal, one of my two worldbuild primary protagonists, into a paused D&D-esque crossover project. A warlock with ambitions despite the agreeable nature of his current pact, Kaid is tapped by the demon Agaliarept to assess a myth-shrouded, perplexing figure whose lack of discernible motive doesn't sit well with Kaid's patron.In short, Kaid is assigned to both scout and bargain with one of the fae. An old fae, and one who - if what's shown in the card(s) bears any relation to reality - will either aid or deter Kaid's desire for advancement....more likely the latter.





	Man of Conscience

A voice laden with appreciation spoke from behind Kaid. _“Magnificent.”_

Kaid himself was inclined to agree. He didn’t turn from the mirror, instead looking beyond his reflection toward that of the demon seated behind him, his black eyes meeting orange- and yellow-striated ones. “Not exactly subtle, is it?”

Da-Agaliarept chuckled. “No. Neither are the fae. You could be wrapped in burlap and still impugn upon that strutting throng’s collective ego, but I’m not without standards.” The reflection’s claw tapped thoughtfully against a carved bone armrest, and the voice behind Kaid developed a brooding rumble. “The performance is a tradition at this point. I wonder if it hasn’t made me predictable.”

Kaid’s focus returned to his own mirror image, again taking in the high, stiff, open-throated collar of the jacket, the sharp lapels, and the swirling pattern of tattoos on his chest the jacket didn’t conceal even when buttoned. Kaid liked it. Intensely.

Agaliarept’s musings weren’t for him to comment upon, but silence had the capacity to speak louder than words, and he couldn’t stand here admiring himself forever. Or his boss’s tailor’s craftsmanship.

Diverting was the wiser course. “What do I need to know?”

His patron’s claws ceased tapping and grew still. “Tell me your mind.”

Something of the pattern woven into the collar - deep peach within black - reflected as he moved a fraction of a turn, looking like molten metal circulating through veins beneath the fabric. Kaid watched it in fascination as he spoke. “You want something very badly from this man. I’m more likely to be interpreted as an insult than a persuasion.”

“Insult?” His patron snorted. “Hardly. Insult would be to ignore what you offer.”

Kaid offered a slow grin to the mirror, canine catching briefly on his lower lip. “Am I offering something?”

“False humility is almost as unbecoming as feigned ignorance, Kaid.” Agaliarept lifted a hand and drew a lazy circle in the air with a claw tip. “The hair.”

The opening of the form-fitting jacket shifted to a wider V-shape as Kaid reached up and drew the tie from his hair. He shook his head, inky curls falling to his shoulders around the high collar, serpentine shapes regaining volume once freed from the confines of the ponytail. He ran his fingers through it, quietly luxuriating in the new lack of tautness, moving errant locks to lay more comfortably around his horns.

Agaliarept wasn’t wrong. Down, framing his face, his hair added something unspeakably wicked to an already decadent outfit. From waist to knee, black pants clung like a second skin before flaring gently down to the cuffs, fronts slit just enough so his boots protruded. The leather had been polished to gliding perfection.

Kaid’s ears twitched, points revealed through the cascade of hair, gold hoops jingling.

Zero subtlety. Carefully crafted or no, he was a vulgar, hip-thrusting beckon to vice.

“I’m reasonably certain the mirror will survive your absence. Come sit with me.”

Kaid turned, approaching the bone-inlaid, dark wooden throne playing host to his patron.

_Bone and obsidian when my time comes. The wood’s too warm-looking, Da-Agaliarept. Someone’s going to see your soft side and go for the soft bits of your throat for it._

Indulging his own imagination didn’t preclude examining the considerable amount of demon before him. Agaliarept dwarfed Kaid, body muscular in the same subtlety-eschewing manner suggested by his statues. Kaid knew from experience that none of it was purely for show, having been subject to the unyielding holds of which it was capable.

An orcish prominence of the lower jaw lent severity to his patron’s face. The eyes - orange and yellow bended into a vivid starburst pattern accounting for neither sclerae nor pupil - looked like artist’s renderings of molten fury.

Kaid knew better. The look in them was molten, certainly, but there was no fury.

Naught but boots and a center-tapered skirt left a great deal of dull grey-blue skin exposed. Counterintuitive to those things in which Agaliarept dealt, he looked like an engine of brutality, a biological machine denoting wartime function. His patron didn’t lack for toned bulk, and all of that bulk looked amply suited to the task of decimating an army. Barefisted.

Many dismissed Agaliarept as the embodiment of the stereotype. Brutish. Slow. Unthinking. Guileless, maybe.

Kaid smirked inwardly. Everyone who'd fallen prey to the assumption had discovered it ruinous.

Agaliarept was guile personified. In any official recommendation, he was the go-to demon if one sought secure passage of communication from one territory to any other. In unofficial recommendation he was an architect of leverage, weaving nets of damning information against threats and prospective conquests alike. Even his friends knew him to be duplicitous, none doubting that they, too, would suffer should he set his sights on their demesnes.

Despite that, he’d never sought an outright empire, or dominion over people beyond his network of bonded, informants, and allies. In many ways, the informal design afforded him more clout than any traditional monarch. He pulled a few strings, whispered reminders, and those around him moved in tune with his purpose under threat of exposure.

Agaliarept’s organization honored the will of the individual, too. All of his were his by choice, consent integral to his unique system of bonding.

That, more than anything, had drawn Kaid into his employ.

There was but one seat. The demon seemed disinclined to move.

Kaid set a knee on the wooden edge and lifted himself up, swinging his other leg over and settling himself astride his patron. He set his hands on the armrests near the back of the throne. The polished wood was cool to the touch.

Agaliarept’s left hand abandoned its armrest. Claws longer than Kaid’s own trailed over the cloth of his jacket, tracing gentle patterns along Kaid’s spine as his patron looked thoughtfully down at him.

Though not so much as to indicate trouble, Agaliarept’s voice deepened. “Your gaze plots a new organization every time it falls on some corner of mine, Kaid. Describe yours to me.”

Kaid lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I’m not ungrateful. You know my ambitions.”

Agaliarept nodded. “I know you _have_ ambitions, but what they are?” What would’ve been a self-effacing smile on anyone else wrote twelve layers of perceptiveness on his features. “Not at all.”

Kaid’s tail jerked as the claws at his spine travelled downward. “Would you believe me if I told you I had my eye on a tailor’s shop?”

His patron bellowed laughter, head tilting back. “That’s what I like about you, Kaid.” He looked down again, meeting Kaid’s eyes. “It’s not the only thing, but you never tell a boring lie.”

Kaid smiled. “The best lies are cultivated in a seed bed of truth.” He lifted one hand and tapped the collar of his jacket, then returned to bracing that hand against the armrest. “I grew up in a tailor’s shop. Whatever else my ambitions involve, I intend to see one in my territory.”

 _“‘Cultivated in a seed bed of truth.’”_ Da-Agaliarept shook his head. “That sounds like drivel learned among spies or politicians, not clothiers.”

Kaid shrugged, this time with both shoulders. “Something I overheard while hemming some pants.”

“Of course.” His patron tapped just above the base of Kaid’s tail, making it jerk again. “No matter how fond I am of you, my business operates on two principles. One - only I am at the helm. Two - I don’t suffer competition. You’re too capable a second. If you’ve got any designs on the same business I’m in, you’re going to become a problem for me.”

“I’m not redesigning your business in my head.”

“I know.”

Agaliarept’s claws paused in their dance, and he looked somewhere beyond Kaid before turning his gaze back to his Second.

They’d done this once before. This silent assessment. The first time, when Kaid had made his debut at Agaliarept’s doorstep and aired his desire for an exchange of power and servitude, the demon had spent a long time gaze-locked with him in silence. Kaid had thought it an interrogation technique back then. A way to unnerve him into revealing more than he had.

Now he wasn’t sure. There was an assessment going on, but - despite meeting his eyes - an indistinctness in the look suggested Agaliarept’s thoughts had turned inward, not outward. Taking inventory of his own mind.

Agaliarept’s tapping renewed. “You’ve been an asset. You made sure of it.”

Kaid nodded. “Bonds carry an understood permanence. You know I can’t ask.”

“I know.” Agaliarept’s leg shifted beneath Kaid. “I’d have the truth from you. Give me the lay of the land.”

Kaid’s hand found the band keeping Agaliarept’s meager covering in place. He ran his own smaller, trimmed claws over it and spoke quietly. “There’s no satisfaction in being a mouthpiece for another, or a conduit for fealty between one being and another.” His hand stilled. “I’m not ungrateful.”

Agaliarept smiled wanly. “But you’ve never been quite satisfied, either.” He sighed, flattening the palm at Kaid’s back. "I deal in communication.”

 _So you say._ Kaid shifted himself forward, brushing the skirt up a fraction of an inch. “And I deal in one of your delivery methods. I don’t have any interest in the information-gathering business,” he released the armrest and lifted a finger to forestall Agaliarept’s protest, “beyond what I’ve learned from you. Establishing a little influence with those around me.”

“Is that the truth? No aspirations toward putting me out of business?”

Kaid dropped his hand to join the other. He put a bit more emphasis into his words. _“I’m not ungrateful.”_

The air in the room seemed to stir, but no open doors or windows standing ajar accounted for it.

Agaliarept spared a glance around himself. “Courtesans?”

“Courtesans, and spies for hire, I think.”

“Risky.” The demon shook his head. “Your clients won’t be comfortable with your acquisition of the same information they seek. It’ll shift liability from their own spies to yours, make you a target.” He met Kaid’s eyes again. “All a courtesan need do is enjoy sex and be willing. Spying involves a different, and broader, skill set.”

Kaid stopped toying with the band at Agaliarept’s hips. “A couple of spies.”

It was odd hearing his patron repeat himself, but the demon said it again. “It’s risky.”

“I can train them.”

“You can.” Agaliarept’s tone changed. “I’ve known since you showed up at my door eight years ago.”

Kaid lifted an eyebrow.

“Agree to ally with me.” Some formal degree of tension drained from the stone chamber. “I’ll do what can be done on my end. I’m not entirely wise to how ascension works, but I can shake the tree and see if something falls loose. Not only that, I’ll look into making it happen for you, provided you do something for me in return.”

Kaid blinked, considering. “Allyship once I’ve ascended in exchange for the information, your promise to do whatever’s in your own power to see that ascension take place in exchange for me doing this new job?” He offered another spare smile. “Remind me never to make a deal with you. That’s tidier than Max’s room.”

Agaliarept loosed another bellow of laughter. “Isn’t it?” Mirth subdued, he moved his free hand to Kaid’s hair and toyed with it. “Swear to ally with me, bring me a boon in the coming times, and I’ll do whatever’s in my ability to help you become your own font of power.”

Kaid resisted the urge to lean into the hand. “A boon?”

“I have a job for you. You’ll be my representative.”

“Court or covert?”

Agaliarept lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Either. Both. My choice isn’t arbitrary. I want _you_ there, specifically.”

“Why me?”

Kaid’s patron made a strange face. “Because you’re the most adept at switching tracks when situation demands, and I need this individual analyzed by someone capable of giving full attention to the analysis, regardless of the circumstances.”

“Analyzed. Recruit? Threat?”

“An unknown.” Agaliarept grimaced. “So much as I enjoy you where you are, I’ll need to stand.”

Kaid braced his hands on the armrests and slid off his patron’s lap, tugging absently at his coat as he stood until the garment had been returned to crisp, clean planes.

He looked up.

 _Partway_ up.

As Agaliarept stood, the skirt that’d been edged up beyond the realm of propriety fell to its usual length, but not before Kaid noticed his lap-squirming hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Agaliarept offered him a wry, promising half-grin and stepped down from the throne dais, gesturing at Kaid in a dual-fingered beckon as he moved toward a desk sporting a single drawer. Kaid followed, stopping next to the demon and watching him open it.

A small, stiff square of paper sat atop a small mess of notebooks and parchments. The covers featured the leavings of Agaliarept’s idle doodling, something he indulged in while pouring over his considerable accumulation of debts. He’d even decorated the borders of his contracts with artful loops and swirls; many who owed him thought them arcana involved in the deed, but all were mundane, no more relevant to magic than meaningless decoration on the borders of wedding invitations.

Agaliarept plucked up the card and offered it to Kaid, closing the drawer. “I’d know your thoughts on this and the man behind it.”

Kaid took it, holding it so the light of a wall lantern offered a better view.

Thinly-drawn, gold and pewter patterns overlaid a rich burgundy on the card. It gave Kaid the impression of a mosaic, or the kind of painstakingly detailed murals found in the tombs of monarchs as long dead as the ancient civilizations over which they’d reigned. Along the inner gold ring, four small arrows signed the cardinal directions, and the center bore a single eye staring outward with an oddly indirect blankness. Beautiful in execution, but distant. Unfocused.

The bottom of the card offered little insight: “For those seeking awareness, advice, or advantage,” a murky advertisement. Below it, curling script in a language foreign to Kaid, sat a single word.

He looked back up at Agaliarept. “‘Awareness, advice, or advantage.’ Sounds like a bookie or a street fortune teller with pretensions.”

Agaliarept tilted his hand in a so-so gesture. “Turn it a bit in the light. It gets interesting.”

Looking back down, Kaid did as asked, tilting the card so the light’s reflection dimmed and brightened on the metallic-

Kaid froze. Looked up at his patron, received an encouraging nod, and stared back at the card.

A lazy cascade of eyes moved with the change in illumination, revealed only as the card was in motion. They weaved to and fro and slid gradually from one side to the other over the less remarkable design he’d seen while the card had been stationary. A river of eyes, some beseeching, some cruel, others staring out with rage so absolute it chilled Kaid. A few seemed glazed, hazy with pain or suffering-laden resignation. They didn’t move as water did, but more as though they were carried along in a body of viscous sludge.

“Your mind, Kaid.”

Kaid ran a thumb over the surface of the card, feeling nothing but the paper’s fine grain and the light emboss of the less remarkable printing. “Whoever he is, he certainly doesn’t undervalue himself, does he?”

Agaliarept made a sound of agreement, but was otherwise silent. He wanted the full read. Kaid went on.

“The worry is in the advantage. Maybe the advice. ‘Awareness’ seems like a throwaway word, included so he could fluff his slogan into a psychologically satisfying trio.” Kaid crossed an arm over himself, holding his other upper arm as he let the card sway in the light. “You think he’s in the information business.”

“You disagree?”

Kaid shook his head. “No, but I suspect there’s something else here. ‘Advantage’ is such an unusual choice.” He looked again at Agaliarept. “No qualifiers. Not power, not combat, not influence, just… advantage. I don’t like it. Either he’s a bullshit artist, or-”

“-Or he’s a power to be feared.” Agaliarept half-sat on the desk and crossed his arms. “I’m glad you see it, too. I couldn’t pinpoint what felt off about the wording.”

Kaid canted the card upward, meeting Agaliarept’s look with concern. “I think it’s an appeal to the desperate.”

Agaliarept lifted an eye ridge. “Explain.”

“Anyone capable of offering advantage anywhere would be a name we know. A brand, a business, a face. Not,” Kaid wiggled the card, “shrouded in mystery like this. You can’t hide resources that vastly encompassing for very long.”

“Agreed.” Agaliarept nodded at the card. “The card is enchanted. Expensive.”

“For appearance’s sake. That’s another odd thing.” Kaid moved the card and watched the unsettling stream of eyes move across it again. “Desperate people aren’t usually wealthy. Sometimes, but not often. With the regular print alone, I would’ve pegged him for a confidence man posing as a mystic, but fake psychics and fortune tellers aren’t going to blow the goods on something disposable like this.”

He flicked the card. “High quality paper. Enchanted. He’s good at something. _Very_ good at it.” Kaid rested a hip against the side of the desk and prodded his own growing sense of frustration. “But he doesn’t advertise exactly what that is.”

“Perhaps you’ll uncover that when you run into him.” Agaliarept moved, and the wood of the desk complained with an unhappy ticking sound. “Have you more thoughts?”

Kaid was silent for a handful of moments, opting to mirror Agaliarept’s half-seat upon the desk. He tapped his heel on the desk leg. “The outfit,” he gestured to his jacket, “makes a bit more sense. This guy places value on appearances, so you’re either banking on him appreciating a well-appointed set of threads or including them as an implied threat.”

Agaliarept nodded. “Moreso the former.”

Kaid offered a small, grateful smile. “Good to know my well-being factored in.”

“I did mention I’m fond of you.”

“You did.” Kaid tipped the card again. “I don’t know what’s written at the bottom. Intuition says it’s a name, but intuition would also advise against blowing money on illusory effects for business cards. Do you know what it says?”

Agaliarept shook his head. “It isn’t dae.”  
  
They both fell silent, and Kaid closed his eyes, sighing. “Shit.”

“If you keep echoing my sentiments, I’m going to have to consider sending in a different agent or handling it myself.”

Kaid opened his eyes and stared down at the card bobbing between his fingers. Trying to see something more. Willing it to offer an explanation, a rationale, but it refused him peace.

He focused on individual eyes, watching for changes in them - a shift in focus or transition to other emotions - and spoke absently. “I think he’s enjoying it.”

“Hmm?”

 _“That’s_ what this is.” He looked up and offered the card back to Agaliarept, who took it from him and laid it on the notebook pile inside the drawer. “It’s a game to him.”

Agaliarept echoed Kaid’s sigh as he slid the drawer closed. “A game.”

Kaid left the desk and slow-paced, moving as he thought, mind churning along as though an obstruction had crumbled and fallen away. “Consider it. Everything about this man screams contradictions. Vague, prophetic promises geared toward people in dire straits, coupled with the image of affluence. Spooky mysticism in word - the kind of faith people cling to when they’ve got nothing else - but with a shameless emphasis on something material.” He pointed toward the drawer where the object of his frustration lay hidden. “That fucking card is satire. A rich man dressing up in cheap palm reader’s silks, but purposefully ruining the image with gold and diamonds around his neck. Mocking.”

He paused, crossing his arms, the tip of his tail jerking animatedly. “I’m almost positive. He’s an asshole. It’s a piece of his contempt for other people doled out with every card.”

Laughter - tinctured by concern - erupted from Agaliarept. “Thank you for reminding me why I chose you for this.” He slid from the desk, moving in a smooth way that belied the stiff muscle, and ran the top surface of his claw over one of Kaid’s lapels. “I won’t force you to go. There’s a very real risk he’s fae, and old, and the old ones are power incarnate. You can stay here, going on as you have.”

 _Maneuvers and counter-maneuvers._ Kaid looked at him, feeling a genuine pang of regret. “You know why I can’t.”

Agaliarept closed his eyes briefly. “You know I had to ask.”

“I do. I’d stay, if-”

“No.” Agaliarept’s sunburst eyes opened again and met Kaid’s. “I don’t resent your ambition or your way in other matters. There’s nothing to excuse.”

Kaid rested a hand on his patron’s chest and didn’t look away, but the painful process of change had begun and there was nothing for it now. He switched tracks. “What needs to be done here before I head out?”

Some of the bleakness left Agaliarept’s countenance, and he smirked. “Ensure Grandmother is agreeable to keeping Max out of trouble in your absence, and pack well for the road.”

The hand slipped from Agaliarept’s chest, and Kaid felt another pang, this one less dire and more a sudden onset of mental exhaustion. He felt his shoulders beginning to slump and crossed his arms against it. “Surely someone else can do that?”

Agaliarept leaned in and down, licking Kaid’s ear and making him shiver before whispering against the split points at the top. “I needn’t tie you down anywhere to make you suffer.”

A cold thrill travelled down Kaid’s neck to his spine. He let the shiver move him in against Agaliarept and lifted his chin until he spoke into his patron’s ear. “Neither do I.”

They stood like that, paused, Kaid’s inhibition fluctuating, forearms presenting a token barrier between them.

He moved back first, noticing Agaliarept’s disappointment and offering him a heavy-lidded look. “Grandmother. Packing. And something else before I go.”

Kaid watched with no shortage of satisfaction as Agaliarept wrestled visibly with himself. Too many seconds passed, and the demon’s voice went taut with self-restraint. “Then I suggest you see to it before the order of those things changes.”

Smiling, feeling smug, Kaid uncrossed his arms and made his way toward the rear of the chamber. He opened the door leading to the back of the half-apartment half-compound.

Every call was a close call. Looking back ran the risk of being misinterpreted, or Kaid losing the thin advantage.

There was that word again. _Advantage._

Temptation almost undid him.

Almost.

He opened the door, stepped through, and closed it behind him.

 

………

 

 

Kaid wasn’t prone to heartburn, or particularly to anxiety, but both found him with a bloodhound’s keen diligence whenever circumstances put him anywhere near Grandmother.

She _wasn’t_ his relative, or indeed the relative of anyone save Eryss, another of Agaliarept’s bonded. The tiny, frail, elderly human woman’s room and board - and certain degrees of caretaking in her biological granddaughter’s absence - were part of Eryss’s agreement with Agaliarept in exchange for service. Eryss herself was a competent wizard and courier, but the woman who’d been part of her bargain...

Though most of the compound knew the old, self-stylized “witch” to be named Talia by dint of gossip, she’d insisted on being referred to by any and all as “Grandmother.”

Some in residence could honestly claim hundreds of years in age. Nevertheless, all respected her wish, Agaliarept included. Watching a drow call her “Grandmother” - said drow having witnessed the rise and fall of at least two prominent civilizations - had inducted Kaid into the exclusive company of antacid connoisseurs.

She was a Nine-befucked anomaly who knitted afghans and dispensed unsolicited sex advice the way most kindly, elderly women dispensed butterscotch candies.

Moving down the tile-and-panel hallway to the little apartment she called home, Kaid felt tension slither into his shoulders and constrict. He didn’t dislike Grandmother, in fact was bizarrely charmed by her the way most were, but she spoke in a way that conflicted badly with Kaid’s sense of discretion. It was his practice to handle certain subjects with a delicate hand, and Grandmother had a distressing habit of wiping away decorum with a smile and an offer of lemonade.

Kaid reached the door and knocked. A voice filled with surprising vigor answered him.

“I’m decent, little one! Come in!”

 _That hasn’t been true since you got here._ Kaid opened the door.

Disaster greeted him. Furniture and floor alike resembled a battlefield, clothes and yarn balls strewn about in lieu of fallen soldiers, the odd questionable stain in the carpet a substitute for drying blood. No less than ten clocks of varying style, size, and internal mechanism sat like trophies atop shelves in the living area. None reported the same time. At least two had given up monitoring the passage of it, their longest hands stilled like hamfisted clues injected into a copper-piece whodunit.

Kaid found a relatively uncongested part of the floor and stood on it, warily eyeing the other little doorway leading into the mess.

The object of his unease came lurching in, cane in hand, untamed silver hair startled into a peacock-esque array of clumps and strands that stirred with her movements like airy cobwebs. Eyes dulled with the telltale beginning film of cataracts brightened at the sight of him and she paused, garish yellow robe swaying around her feet.

“Why, Mister Ir-Dal, don’t you look a treat! Dapper enough to dance among the gods, and how!” She tapped her cane on the floor. “Alas, I know you didn’t come here for me, so who’s fortune-spanked ass are you off to destroy, then?”

Talia made a vague pumping motion with her little fist.

Kaid choked.

_Agaliarept’s. He just doesn’t know it yet._

He did everything in his power to school his face into something that hadn’t witnessed an octogenarian miming what Grandmother had been miming and cleared his throat. “I’m here to see if you’d be willing to cover Maxalis’s care while I’m away.”

Hobbling, she waved her free hand as she moved through the fabric carnage on the floor, occasionally swatting yarn or half-completed knitting projects aside with her cane. “‘Course, ‘course I will. Business or pleasure?”

Kaid winced. “Business.” Joining Talia at her small, cluttered table, he sat after she’d settled herself. “Doubt there’ll be time for much else.”

“Work, work, work, eh?” She cackled and began pawing a number of bags piled next to her chair, checking the contents of one before batting it aside and delving into another. “Need more fun in your life, Mister Ir-Dal-”

“‘Kaid’ is fine-”

“-And never interrupt a woman when she’s searching for something.” She made an effortful grunt and hefted one of the bags up to the table, dropping it on a pile of open knitting patterns and broad, color-coded needles. “You’re the kind of man who needs reminders.”

Kaid patted his pocket, disappointment setting in when he remembered the antacids hadn’t been relocated to the new jacket. “Really, Grandmother, there’s no need.”

“But there _is,_ Mister Ir-Dal!”

She pulled an afghan from the bag. Letting her cane fall to the rest of the pile on the floor, she began unfolding.

And unfolding.

With each new revelation, Kaid found his chair a little more uncomfortable.

Insofar as he knew, Grandmother’s afghans, quilts, and other products of sewing carried a two-to-one likelihood in favor of depicting something mundane. Birds were a favorite, anything from swans to crows, and not long ago she’d given Max a new quilt covered in sheep, the creatures’ wooly portions actually sewn-on knots of yarn.

Then there were blankets like these.

Grandmother unfolded again. Kaid spotted the better part of a threesome of beings, all nude, all enjoying each other’s company.

Kaid’s inhale was unsteady. “How… how did you make that look _wet?”_

She offered him a cheery grin. “Practice, little one!” She shook it out finally, draping it over herself, the floor, and part of the table. “And lots of subtle little differences in the yarn color.”

 _I’d give much to know what your life was like before you arrived here._ He eyed a pair of what were either tieflings or half-tiefling hybrids sharing close quarters behind a blissful-looking, bent-over elf who was clinging for dear life to a headboard. _And why you’re given to such generously-proportioned equipment._

An abominable ache near the end of his tail informed Kaid he’d wrapped it around a chair leg, constricting. He forced himself to relax and let go, leaning forward and accepting the knitted tableau from Talia.

Monuments would one day be erected to the self-control he poured into his voice. “You shouldn’t have.”

She waved her hands in a light, dismissive gesture. “You’re welcome. If your place is anything like yourself, it probably needs a little brightening, dear.” She sat back in the chair. “Is there anything I should know about Max’s classwork?”

Grateful for the change in subject, Kaid folded the afghan and thought. “They’ve taken to runes lately. They still like history, but it seems their focus has left the subject in general and taken a decidedly glyph-specific turn.”

“Hah! Thought they would. Little bugger’s got a knack for writing.” Talia passed her hand over the table clutter and rested her arm on the disorganization. “Anyone ever suss out what Max is?”

Kaid shrugged, resting the bundled gift in his lap. “Agaliarept seems to think they’re goblin and tiefling, maybe triton somewhere in the mix.”

Slyness shone through her cataract haze. “You don’t think so, huh?”

“I suspect they’re something we’re not familiar with.” Kaid hesitated. “Still nothing?”

Talia’s mischievousness sank into seriousness, or her closest approximation. “They don’t remember much before Agaliarept found them. A little bit about the parents, and some shouting about ‘abominations’ from whomever attacked, but nothing else.”

They shared thoughtful silence, Talia moving a few paper patterns aimlessly on the table and Kaid both watching and not, concern for their charge going unspoken between them.

She roused herself first. “They’ll be fine here. They’re a dab hand at sorting my potion ingredients, too!”

Kaid ignored that. The most she’d ever managed was the odd exploding concoction, more a threat to the eyebrows than anything. “Thank you, Grandmother.” He tucked the end of the afghan tighter into the bundle and stood. “I don’t know how long this particular assignment will be.”

Talia cackled. “Here’s hoping it’s _very_ long, and twice as hard!” She patted the table for emphasis, rocking in mirth. “‘Less you ain’t fond of competition.”

Were he any other man, Kaid would’ve sputtered, but he settled for burying the growing unstable feeling deep within and making his way toward the door. “I’ll manage in either case. Goodnight, Grandmother.”

Talia’s chortling followed him out into the hallway, dimmer once he’d closed the door behind himself. The feeling that’d grown almost since stepping into her apartment was reaching critical mass, and he nearly stumbled down the hall, leaning on the wall for support once he was out of hearing range.

It roiled inside him, demanding freedom. Panic and absurdity and embarrassment tumbling, pushing, seeking an outlet. For a moment, Kaid thought he would scream.

_Long and hard. Fortune… fortune-spanked ass. I’m holding a blanket covered in a fucking orgy. I’m saturated in advantage._

Kaid opened his mouth.

Deep, resonant waves of laughter rolled through the hallway like broken thunder.


End file.
